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Sermon delivered by 
Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus 

- ' August 25, 1912 ' ' 



IN THE CATHEDRAL WOODS 
HEART'S DELIGHT FARM 



Sermon delivered by 
Dr. Frank W. Gunsaulus 

* - August 25, 1912 - - 



IN THE CATHEDRAL WOODS 
HEART'S DELIGHT FARM 









V 




Cathedral Woods 
Heart's Deli&ht Farm 




SERMON DELIVERED BY 

DR < FRANK W - GUNSAULUS 

IN THE CATHEDRAL WOODS 
HEART'S DELIGHT FARM 
^ ^ AUGUST 25, 1912 * * 



AR friends, we are fathered to- 
gether here happily today in the 
temple of the Almighty. These 
arches have heen strung by His Provi- 
dence: these decorations are from His 
hands: this worship is as the worship of 
the early Christians — as the worship of 
those that fathered with Christ on the 
hillside, when He said — u Come ye apart 
with me into the mountain to pray." 
No one ever knew as did Jesus of Naz- 
areth the uses of nature. He so identi- 
fied Himself with nature that when we 
think of Him £,oin£ into the woods we 
think of that day — that sweet and awful 
day of preparation for His Calvary — His 
crucifixion. It was not nature that cru- 
cified Jesus Christ, it was opposition to na- 
ture, opposition to Gods £>race in nature, 
opposition to God's method in nature, 



opposition to God's plan of God's beau- 
tiful revelation in nature, for Jesus (as 
I said last ni&ht) — said to us — " Con- 
sider the lillies of the field." He knew 
that if we would only £et into nature, 
we would find ourselves in the region 
of £race also. 

So we beg,in our service this morn- 
ing, by sinking, — "Into the woods my 
Master went." He had found the secret 
in the woods, the olive woods, the Gar- 
den of Gethsemane — "and on a tree they 
slew Him last" — and from the tree, the 
cross of Calvary, He rules us by His 
love and His power. 

Hymn — 

"The Woods and the Master" 

Quartette 

PRAYER 

Our Heavenly Father, we are in Thy 
presence always, but we are most in Thy 
presence when we retire from the world 
of things which we create and come 
into the world in which Thou hast ex- 
pressed Thyself from the foundation of 
things. We thank Thee that in the 
beginning, Thou hast created the world 



for tke purposes of Tky love. We thank 
Thee for the wonders and appeals to our 
imagination and faith, which we find in 
the world of nature. We thank Thee 
that Thou hast sent the rain ; we thank 
Thee that Thou hast shown no partiality 
in all the development of the beauty 
and love and £>race of nature ; and that 
Thou hast come with the world of £>race, 
the world of love, the world o£ medi- 
cine, and of Thine own sweet Kingdom; 
and that when a limb is broken from a 
tree Thou dost in Thine own way heal 
the wound. We thank Thee, Oh, God, 
for the many seeds that Thou hast £>iven 
to the world to show us the value of 
life — to show us how Thine own King- 
dom extends into the marrow of our 
own thoughts and experiences. May the 
oak hate not the pine, but may we, as 
trees in a £>reat forest watered by Thy 
Providence, £>row up to our calling and 
the end of beauty and usefulness — the 
end of nourishing our world. 

We pray Thy blessing upon these, 
our dear friends, who have made 
possible this meeting today. We ask 
Thee to bless them. We ask Thee to 



grant unto their hearthstone the guid- 
ance, the protection, the over-awing love 
of God. We pray for all of us who are 
here today, and all whom we love, and 
g,rant, Heavenly Father, that we may be 
guided by Thy experience. Forgive us 
all our sins— our g,reat and unnatural 
sins. In this g,reat cathedral of Thine 
own, in the midst of all these columns 
reared upward, we feel the sinfulness of 
our sins — how unnatural, how false. God 
forgive us our sins. We ask all these 
blessings in the name of One who 
taught us how to pray — (The Lord's 
Prayer — Sung, by Quartette.) 

Hymn — 

' ( Fm a Pilgrim ' ■ 

Quartette 

The book in the Bible which brings 
us closest, in the history of the old 
Hebrew people, to the demand for a 
Savior is the Book of Job. There are 
two places in the Book of Job where you 
feel that, inside of the chrysalis of this 
old faith, there is the strange creature 
called the soul, which is becoming, wing- 



ed. Just as tke butterfly comes forth — 
and breaks its old chrysalis in order to 
come forth winded — so twice in the 
Book of Job you feel that there are 
win^s inside and that the old faith is 
not sufficient. Once is where Job is try- 
ing to reconcile the theory which his 
friends have of God and God's dealings 
with the facts in his own life. 

Now, the growth of religion has 
always come because man has been try- 
ing to make a reconciliation between his 
ideas of what God is above, and the facts 
in his own life. Job, you know, had the 
experience of being, a g,ood man, and yet 
suffering, and his friends — in the old 
dispensation of things — said, "Why, if 
you are suffering, that means you are a 
wrong, man." They did not know that 
the greatest sufferer the world has ever 
seen, Jesus of Nazareth, was the best of 
men and that He suffered not because 
He was a bad man, but because He was 
a g>ood man. They did not know the 
vdue of that truth — 

"Is it so, Oh Christ in Heaven, 
That the highest suffer most; 



That the noblest wander farthest 

£nd most helplessly are lost: 
That the mark of rank in nature 

Is capacity for pain; 
That the sorrow of the singer 

Makes the sweetness of the strain? ' ' 

They did not know that. And so Job 
cries out — "Oh, i£ there were a middle 
man, an umpire between us both, so that 
I could understand Thee, Oh God, Thou 
couldst understand me." The difficulty 
between Job and his God was not at all 
the difficulty that his friends thought; 
it was not because Job was a bad man, 
for he was a £ood man, but the difficulty 
was, they did not see that salvation is 
not from suffering, but salvation is 
through suffering. 

Now, the second time in the Book 
of Job, we feel the moving of the butter- 
fly, that is, the winded insect inside of 
the chrysalis, is where he cries out — 
"If a man die shall he live ag>ain?" 
That is, life is too strict, too narrow, too 
small. This life is not for the comple- 
tion of all that is within the human soul, 
and there must be a life to come, in order 



that things shall be evened up, in order 
that we shall reach the thing, of which 
we dream. Now it is this Book of Job 
that is closest to nature. 

He is sinking, here like a g,reat poet 
— " Whereupon are the foundations of 
the earth laid, who laid the comer-stone 
of the world when the morning stars 
sang, together and all the sons of God 
shouted for joy? Who shut up the sea 
with doors when it brake forth as if it 
had issued out of the womb? When I 
made the cloud the garment thereof" — 
(think of the cloud as a garment hiding 
the Infinite and yet revealing the Infin- 
ite) — "and thick darkness a swaddling,- 
band for it, and said, 'Hitherto shalt thou 
come, but no further: and here shall thy 
proud waves be stayed? Hast thou 
entered into the treasures of the snow, 
or hast thou seen the treasures of the 
hail? Hath the rain a father, or who 
hath begotten the drops o£ dew? The 
waters are hid as with a stone, and the 
face of the deep is frozen. Canst thou 
bind the sweet influences o£ Pleiades, or 
loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou 
bring, forth Mazzaroth in his season, or 



canst thou £uide Arcturus with his sons? 
Tell me, who provideth for the raven 
his food? When his young, ones cry unto 
God, they wander for lack of meat.' 

Now I shall ask this choir to an- 
nounce to you one of the texts in the 
next of their son£s — "He shall come 
down like rain upon the mown £rass, as 
showers that water the earth" — and will 
you notice how the ^reat writer of this 
music has gotten hold of the principle 
that, after all, our greatest blessings are 
from above, as the rain cometh down 
upon the mown g>rass. 

jinthem — 

"Ee shall come down like Bain 9 

Quartette 

Once a^ain, my dear friends, we £>o 
into nature under the leadership of those 
who were masters of the gospel of the 
g>race of God before their time, to find 
their lesson and our lesson, The two 
texts that I want to brin£ to you to-day, 
as guiding, our thought are, first of all, 
these words which you have just heard, 
and which have been explained to you 

8 



in music as they have never been ex- 
plained to me in any other way. I 
think, after all, the £>reat musicians are 
the £>reat interpreters, and Mendelssohn, 
more than all the rest of those who fol- 
low him, as in this psalm, has made 
known to us by music what he could 
not convey to one another by words. 
"He shall come down like rain upon the 
mown £rass, as showers that water the 
earth" and "We all do fade as a leaf." 

I remember very well when a boy I 
used to read these words — "He shall 
come down like rain upon the mown 
£rass" — and I was greatly disturbed, for 
it seemed to me that in autumn it did 
about nothing else except come down 
like rain upon the mown £>rass. I re- 
member it was a terrible time for us 
who had to depend upon the hay all 
through the winter to feed the stock, 
and we were in £>reat fear lest we mi&ht 
not brm£ the stock through the winter 
because there would not be enough hay. 
Well, the reason the hay appeared to us 
so very valuable that we could scarcely 
use it even for the feed of the stock, 
and there was so little of it that we 



could use for the stock, was not in the 
fact that there was not a g,ood lot of hay 
in June, and, indeed, that there had not 
been a &ood deal of hay cut, but the 
weather was so wet, and the rains were 
so intermittent and remittent that it was 
impossible for us to cure the hay; and I 
shall not forget happening upon this 
text — "He shall come down like rain 
upon the mown £rass" — and I really did 
not think that was very much of a 
beneficence, or that it proved very 
much of the goodness of God or the 
power of God to help man along, in this 
world, especially with the prospects of 
winter before us. But a little later 
when I be&an to study and saw more 
deeply into nature, and especially when 
I saw into the meaning of these wonder- 
ful words, I found that the simplest of 
the translations of these words accorded 
perfectly with the better view of God, 
and His providence — "He shall come 
down like rain upon" — not the hay at 
all — but "the mown £rass" — the stubble. 
Indeed, the phrase "the stubble" would 
be very much better as a translation 
than the "mown &rass". You and I 

10 



think of mown g,rass as something, that 
we take with a pitchfork and put into 
the stack or put into the hay mow. 
The mown g,rass means the stubble, and 
as I look upon you, strangers for the 
most part, and yet friends because of 
these delightful associations year by 
year, I am sure of one thing,; that is, of 
the stubble. I am so much surer of the 
stubble in my own life than I am of the 
hay, that I can stop with you until this 
soaks within you as the rain has soaked 
to the very roots, the very extremities 
of the roots of the stubble in yonder 
field. 

God's g,reat benevolence, God's most 
gracious g>ift, God's most wonderful g,race, 
I may say, lies in His ability and His 
willingness to deal with the stubble of 
our life. Here is a man, for example, 
who has produced a fine picture; that 
picture is, as it were, the hay which has 
been cut off from the roots of the g>rass. 
He, by a singje stroke of the flaming, 
scythe of his genius, has taken off that 
fine product. All through the years he 
has been living, for that picture. I am 
thinking, now of a picture by Inness, such 



11 



as these woods would kave furnished 
him. George Inness life lived in that 
picture ag,ain. When he took the picture 
out of his soul, it was as though he had 
taken by the scythe from the rootlet, 
the hay, and offered it for the feeding 
of man and for the benefit of the world. 
Well, is there no other picture there? 
Is that the end of it? What is the history 
of genius? Why every song, that these, 
my dear friends sing, is as it were the 
cutting, of the hay — the g,rass is taken 
from the roots; but, as a matter of fact, 
so g,reat is God s g,race and so wonderful 
is Gods power, that into their emotional 
life I think there trickle tears, back into 
their very souls sometimes, and I have 
heard these dear friends of mine when 
I thought they were watering, with the 
tears of their own perplexity and sorrow 
the rootlets from which the congrega- 
tion had obtained such g,reat blessing: 
"He shall come down like rain upon the 
mown grass," and the ability to sing, one 
song, and the singing of that song,, the 
taking of that harvest from these root- 
lets, leaves stubble. We say it is only 
stubble, it is the last I can do, this is the 

12 



end of it all ; while the fact is that God's 
g,race is such that coming, down from 
above, we know not from where, water- 
ing, the roots of our life, dealing with 
the very fundamental things, there comes 
up out of these same roots, that were 
once so dry and so hopeless, the ener- 
getic powers that produce another har- 
vest, and your next harvest is greater 
than the first. 

You have been bring,in^ in, through 
our friends' influence, here into this 
northern part of America, what used to 
be thought a thing, of the Orient — alfalfa. 
And here is a field of alfalfa that looks 
like a generous garment of g,reen velvet 
thrown over the shoulder of a queen, so 
lovely and so rich. Is it the second 
crop? Is it the third crop? Well, 
it is the underlying, proof of the 
fact of God in nature ; that He sendeth 
the rain down upon the mown g>rass — 
not upon the hay to spoil it, not upon 
the thing, that you produced out of your 
mind — your picture, — not upon that 
which has come up as the first harvest, 
but upon the sad, wounded roots, the 
bleeding, roots. He sends down upon the 

13 



bleeding roots the rain of His perpetual 
encouragement and presence. That is 
the way He says — "Come up to Me, let 
Me woo you and win you out into this 
sweet soft atmosphere by the appeal and 
challenge of My raindrops; let Me love 
you, love Me as I love you." And here 
you come with your stubble, and the 
soul, bein£ immortal, as the ground is 
not immortal, the programme of the 
soul's life is forever and ever and ever, 
on and on; harvest after harvest and 
crop after crop; first of all, because of 
the nature of the soul and the roots of 
its life, and secondly, because of the 
nature of God and what God is in 
Himself. 

Now, my dear friends, what is the 
use of making this matter of the relig- 
ious life so hard that we have to hammer 
away at it with our philosophies, that 
we have to unlock it with the compli- 
cated keys of our extreme reasoning 
and processes that tire the mind. What 
do you suppose is the real reason that 
we have so awfully fallen back from 
the simplicity of God and the simplicity 
that is in Jesus Christ and the simplicity 

14 



of tkis blessed took, tke Bible. Well, 
tke only answer is tkat man has sought 
out many inventions, tke only answer 
is our egotism. We like to kave a 
problem tkat is very kard, and we like 
to seem very wise and very learned and 
very involved. Tkere is a class o£ 
people in tkis world wko never tkink 
tkey are looking, into anytkin^ deep un- 
less it is muddy. Tke deepest streams 
are sometimes tke clearest. If you 
muddy up tkin&s it is because you stir 
tkem up from tke bottom, or it is be- 
cause muddy water flows in from tke 
outside. Do not make tke mistake of 
supposing tkat a tking, is deep because 
you cannot see into it. I will take you 
to a lake in tke Canadian Rockies so 
deep tkat tkey almost despair of find- 
ing, its foundation; tkere upon tke edg,es 
of tkat lake, sixty, eigkty feet deep, you 
may find your jewel at tke bottom of 
all tke glassy transparency. 

Religion, wkick is tke deepest and 
tke grandest tking, in tke world, ougkt 
to be as simple as tkat, and it is just as 
simple as tkat if we can get out of our 
unnaturalness and into tke naturalness 



15 



which has never been spoiled, which 
has never been harmed or twisted or 
contorted by our sins or by our egotism; 
if we can only &et away from the usin& 
of nature as something to help us — the 
commercializing of nature — and &et into 
the ministry of nature, where nature is 
blessing us and stretching her motherly 
hands over us, and touching our brows 
with her palm and patting our cheeks 
with her soft finders like a mother. 

If you come into these woods and say 
— "I think that beech tree would be an 
admirable lot of boards for my barn;" 
yes, and another man says — "I could 
make some very excellent chairs out of 
that tree," and another mansays — "Well, 
that is not the best use of it, but I could 
use it as a specimen of beech to prove 
something in my philosophy of nature" 
and another man says — "Well yes, I sup- 
pose I could take that beech tree out of 
this wood and put it in my front lot and 
sell my house for three hundred dollars 
more." Does such a man think he loves 
nature? Suppose I were to &o to my old 
mother — some eighty odd years old — 
and say — "I think you could earn some- 

16 



thiri^ if you would g,o out to service: 
you are a g,ood dishwasher, as I remem- 
ber when a boy, and you are an admirable 
seamstress; or, I mig,ht take you and 
make photographs of old ag,e and sell 
these photographs." Would I be loving, 
my mother then? Would I be getting, the 
best out of my mother? 

Here we are this morning, in nature, 
and here we are not attempting, for one 
moment to commercialize nature. The 
very moment you commercialize music 
you strangle St. Cecilia; the very mo- 
ment you try to commercialize elo- 
quence you have turned Demosthenes 
and Cicero and Phillips Brooks and 
Henry Ward Beecher into manufact- 
urers of coin or paper currency. Let us 
just let nature have her way with us 
this morning, for a moment and we will 
see, first of all, there is the nature of God 
— the God above us — and there is the 
nature of the human soul. By that illus- 
tration with reg,ard to the painting, you 
could see what you recog,nized in your 
own mind — that you are full of roots. 
What are these things that sort of twist 
and sing, as they twist and move in the 



springtime of your mind; Tkey are tke 
roots of reason; they are the roots of im- 
agination; they are the roots of memory; 
they are the roots of love ; they are the 
roots of affection. Let these roots g,row 
up from the ground. But how do they 
g,row up? they don't g,row up by their 
own power, there is something above 
them that brings them up. 

And let us g,o back to our last years 
thought: Religion means a rebinding,, a 
ligation; it is like my friend's, Dr. Her- 
rick 's, Heated artery. It is the artery, the 
rebinding,. Religion is to rebind to 
something above — to something that 
will hold. 

Now, the religion of this tree is as 
the religion of a sun worshiper; that 
tree simply lifts its limbs this morning. 
If you could have heard that tree talk, 
it would have said — " Nearer my God 
to Thee, Nearer my Sun to Thee! ' The 
trees life is communion with the sun; 
it is a sun plant and it is drawn out of 
the earth by the sun. Education is the 
drawing, out. We think education is the 
taking, of a hollow mind — of a child's 
mind — and pouring, something, into it; 

18 



that is not education at all, that is infor- 
mation: but education is the drawing 
out, and God's religion is an education. 
His religion of humanity is the drawing 
out. J esus exemplified it when He spoke 
at the well with that Samaritan woman. 
He said to her — " There is a well of 
water possible in you springing, up into 
everlasting life. I am not g>oing, to pour 
something into you, that is not My 
work — My work is to teach you that 
you are an immortal being: that inside 
of you is this well of water springing, 
up into everlasting, life." Our systems 
of education are cistern systems ; we try 
to fill young, persons up and then, of 
course, we think if we have g,ot them 
full, they are very interesting,. If the 
water stays in the cistern too long,, it 
becomes somewhat of a nuisance and is 
no more interesting, than a person who 
is just filled with a lot of information 
and who has no education whatever. 
Jesus' idea was to so g,et at the roots of that 
woman's character, to g,et beneath the 
Samaritaness, to g,et beneath her per- 
sonal history, to g,et beneath her dark 
and shadowy experiences, and to find 

19 



tkere— down deep — the well, the little 
pushing, fountain and let it spring up 
into everlasting life. 

So we have an upward movement, 
and this upward movement is because 
of the nature of God. The nature of 
man is the nature of a series of roots, 
growing, roots in the soul. They would 
not exist except for the nature of God. 
If God were not what He is, man's 
imagination, man's affections and man 's 
ambitions and man's reasonings would 
not be what they are, just as the roots 
would not be what they are if the sun 
and the sky were different. Now, this 
is religion, — the relationship of that 
which is above you to yourself: and the 
greatest test of religion is what it will 
do when you are wounded, when you 
have done your best, when there is 
nothing, left but the roots, when the 
scythe of sorrow, or of production, or 
achievement, or death hisses over your 
rooted life and you have nothing left 
but stubble. 

Now, preach to yourselves this morn- 
ing! How many of you have a lot of stub- 
ble in your lives — you, who have done 

20 



your very Lest. Here is a mother who 
says — "I have prayed ray last prayer, I 
think I have had my final sorrow: My 
boy is out in the West and g>one wrong,. 
I have prayed and sacrificed; I have 
watered these roots with my tears — I 
have nothing hut stubble : I thought to 
rear and g>ive to the world a noble man 
— I am nothing, but stubble." Just look 
up this morning, my mother — "He shall 
come down like rain." 

Well, how many of us this morning 
wanted to see it rain? I confess I was 
ambitious enough and silly enough not 
to want it to rain. How many of us 
who have corn to plow want to see it 
rain; how many of us who have wheat 
to harvest want to see it rain; how 
many of us who have oats to g,et in and 
stack want to see it rain? Well, re- 
member this mother that I am talking, 
about is not raising, oats; she is not 
raising, wheat; she is raising, alfalfa. It 
happens that she has her own task to 
perform in this world; it has been a dry 
season — u He shall come down like rain 
upon the mown g,rass, as showers that 
water the earth." 



21 



What is religion? Religion is the ex- 
perience of receiving something, from 
above that you do not want sometimes; 
receiving something, from above so 
different from the thin^ that you expect 
that you hardly know what to do with 
it, and in our unnaturalness we say— 
' 'What am I g,oing, to do with the drop 
of rain?' ' Suppose we were as mechanical 
about growing, alfalfa, as we are about 
growing, manhood and womanhood. 
Why we would simply take another 
piece of alf alf a 5 if we could, out of some- 
body's barn and stick it on; we would 
so g,raft it in, if we could, and just have 
alfalfa in that way. I have seen people 
who could feet alon^ in their households 
with mock things. They would take a 
bush, for example, from somebody's 
yard and then they would make flowers 
out of paper, and stick the flowers on; 
no life there, no fragrance; and how 
disappointed you are when you come 
up with a perfectly honest nose and try 
to extract fragrance from one of those 
flowers! 

I have seen people whose religion is 
that ways their religion is something 

22 



that has teen stuck on, it has been 
riveted on, it has been put in there and 
there is no relationship of growth. O! 
if you want fragrance, if you want rich- 
ness, if you want lusciousness, if you 
want ail the appeal and delight of nature 
— the swift running juices — you must 
pray for rain — "He shall come down 
like rain upon the mown ^r ass. ' ' Within 
you, my youn^ man, is the marvel of 
life. If your life is anything or to he any- 
thing, my hey, it is to be a partnership 
of stubble with God; God with His ^reat 
sky and His clouds; God with His provi- 
dences so dark sometimes that we can- 
not understand them; God with clouds 
so full that there are thunders and li^ht- 
nin^s; God with His calm, beautiful sky 
that comes to be as lovely as this when 
the clouds broke a moment a£o in the 
midst of the son£>. God is your silent 
partner; God is the partner that fur- 
nishes the capital from above; is the 
bank you can call upon, as you call 
upon God's nature. God is beyond all 
the changes that earth may brin& to 
you, — all the vicissitudes, all the differ- 
ences of climate, all the tramp of the 



23 



hosts of men and all the noise of armies. 
Up there is your partner, — there with 
the g,old of the summer; there with 
the riches of heaven; there with the 
silver of a million, million clouds filled 
with raindrops, and "He shall come 
down like rain." Remember, religion 
is not something, that God sends, it is 
Himself; remember that Christianity is 
not something, about Jesus — but it is 
Jesus — "He shall come down like rain." 

Now suppose you are in difficulty 
here and suppose you find that the roots 
of your life are awfully dry; that it is 
impossible for you ever to produce an- 
other sermon, if you are a preacher. 
Perhaps the congregation may be willing, 
to believe it is the last, but you, poor 
man, are not, You feel you were bom 
to do something, more than to remain 
stubble, just stubble. What are you to 
do? Are you to ask God to send you a 
letter? Are you to ask Him to send 
you a check, some doctrine about Him- 
self? 

Suppose I were to g,o to the roots of 
one of these trees and say— -"Well, now 
I have the most absolutely perfect 

24 



tkeory of rain that you ever knew o£ in 
your life. Thirty-nine articles of it 
written down in the form of a creed, 
and if you will believe this creed about 
the nature of rain, you will be saved, 
and if you do not believe it, you will be 
damned, and that is the end of it. Is 
that Gods way? He, Himself, shall 
come down like rain; the rain itself — 
not a theory of rain, not a creed about 
it. Do not think for a moment that 
you are orthodox if you believe ever so 
much truth about a thing,. Jesus says 
— ' 'Believe on Me" not u Believe some- 
thing, about Me." This religion is a 
personal affair. "He shall come down 
like rain upon the mown g,rass." Not 
a theory of Him with a creed about the 
rain, but "He shall come down like rain 
upon the mown g,rass", and enter into 
partnership with us — a uniting, of the 
Infinite with the finite. When rain 
comes down, it is heaven coming, to 
earth. Why do you stop for a singje 
moment with the silly skepticism that 
says there can be no such thing, as g,race? 
Providence is a beautiful word. I 
love to say it as it oug>ht to be called 



25 



"Pro-ui-dence;" the word means seeing 
ahead. My friend here sees ahead for 
me, comes to me and says, "I see ahead 
a danger and I have put it out o£ your 
way, and I am a &ood friend of yours 
and you are a &ood friend of mine." 
Provideo — to see ahead. Well, just about 
as God's providence is God's &race, — 
where He sends something from above, 
where He just falls out of His nature; 
where the need down here is so £reat 
and the fullness up there so mighty that 
it simply slips out of the ed^e of God's 
&reat beaker — just as wine drops out of 
a goblet — and comes down of itself — 
that is &race. We are saved by grace; 
Providence guides us, but we are saved 
by &raee. We are saved from above as 
the rootlets are. I do not know why 
a man who believes in the religion of 
rootlets should not believe in the relig- 
ion of soul and reason and imagination 
and judgment. I do not see why that 
maple over there flaunting its beautiful 
banner should not also have a religion 
from above — a religion that would 
unite the world beneath to the world 
above. 



26 



Do not tell me, my friend, that the 
religion I am speaking of this morning 
is an impracticable one. I think a g,ood 
deal of our religion is awfully remote; 
it does not touch us. I am so much a 
thin^ of the earth and I am rooted in the 
earth so strongly, but I am here, and 
I've £ot to £>et along, here, and if I am 
to £,row up and ^row heavenward, then 
I feel that religion after all has the ideal 
above it. 

That tree is the marriage of earth 
and heaven. These branches above cor- 
respond to the branches down there. 
These branches down here are in the 
earth and they run down deep, in so far 
as the rains and the dews and the skies 
of God with the sunlight and all the 
atmosphere appeal through these leaves 
to this tree. Now isn't that a practical 
religion — a thing, that will make me bet- 
ter for earth. That is the religion of 
which we speak when we read that old 
psalm — "He shall be planted by the 
river of waters, his leaf also shall not 
wither and whatsoever he doeth shall 
prosper. " There was a beautiful tree 
in the olden time and in the old country 



27 



and, in tke autumn, tkat tree became as 
brilliant as yonder maple, and it was 
because of this religion from above, this 
religion of &race, this religion of God 
in wkick tke tree kad faitk. Wky, 
look at tkat tree in its beauty tkis morn- 
ing. See kow it stands tkere, believing 
tkat God's keavens are not &oin& to 
close, crying up to God, "Come Tkou 
blessed of my fatker, come to me." 
Well, a religion like tkat wkick was in 
tke mind of tke singer of olden time kas 
its leafage of old ag,e, its leafage of 
autumn time, and it is in sympatky witk 
tkat tkou^kt tkat we look into tke word, 
"We all do fade as a leaf." 

Now, we kave talked about tke 
stubble, tke rejuvenation of tke stubble, 
tke new life of tke stubble, tke sanc- 
tification of tke stubble. Do not 
feel badly if you kave to kear an old 
word tkat your ^randfatkers were ac- 
quainted witk when tkey were kere 
witk tke Indians, laying tke foundation 
of tkis commonwealtk. And ok, my 
friends, I wisk to God tkat tke religion 
tkat marcked witk Waskin&ton, tkat or- 
ganized tkat &reat rebellion against tke 



28 



aristocracy and tke autocracy of the 
British Crown, the religion that g,ave us 
out of these struggling, colonies, mighty 
states and proud commonwealths: the 
religion that believed in the g>race o£ 
God that "He will come down like rain 
upon the mown g,rass" — I wish that 
religion were more ourselves, and that 
we were willing, to take even some of 
the old names back ag,ain into our 
loving, bosoms as we march along,! 
What was this commonwealth here? 
What was the result at the close of that 
mig,hty war of 1776 and the war that 
sealed the greatness of this country in 
1812? Stubble, stubble, stubble. If 
ever in the world a country was mowed 
to the very earth and the roots were 
bleeding, it was this young,, migjity 
nation, after those terrible desolating, 
and devastating, wars. "He came down 
like rain upon the mown jkrass, like 
showers that water the earth' — and out 
of all these roots there sprung, something. 
If you are discouraged today, if you 
are downhearted today, it may be that 
today you have g,iven a harvest. That 
mother, Oh, let me beg, of her to pray 



29 



a&ain! Your prayers will not be lost. 
That is one thin& above all things that 
cannot be lost. 

I shall never forget a man whom 
many of you hold as one of our greatest 
men, a President of these United States. 
I will never fail to celebrate the £race 
of God and the saving power of Jesus 
Christ as lon& as I think of that man, 
coming up out of all the blunders and 
out of all the mistakes of his early life, 
&racin£ the presidential chair. I will 
never forget sitting at his side in 
Brooklyn at the &reat commemorative 
exercises in honor of the name and fame 
of Henry Ward Beecher, when he said 
that there was one text, more than any 
other in the world, which came to him 
with sweetest remembrance and that was 
from John's Revelation — "And I saw 
and looked and behold a golden bowl 
containing the prayers of the saints." 
The great rugged face of Grover Cleve- 
land, scarred and marred perhaps, shook 
with thanksgiving and with joy as the 
tears wetted the smile upon his face. 
He said, "I am the last man in the 
world to think that a mother's prayers 

30 



and a fathers prayers — my g,ood old 
Presbyterian preacher father — do not 
reach through the years and finally g,et 
hold." 

Grant, after all the blunders of his 
early intemperance : said to a man whom 
you know — Dr. Tiffany— "If I could 
only tell how I believe in prayer, I 
would tell the story of my father and 
of my mother." This, when he came 
back from the world's courts, after 
sleeping, in Windsor Castle. And only 
a hundred years before our forefathers 
had been humbled by the power of 
British royalty! Oh, the stubble, how 
valuable it is ! 

I do not care where you are today, 
how closely you have been cropped to 
the earth, I do not care how the roots 
themselves are bleeding,, there are bet- 
ter things for you — better things. But, 
now be honest, is it because of the con- 
dition of things here, or is it because of 
the condition of things there? 

Now is not that a simple religion 
and is it not true, and should we not 
look up and live upward: then we shall 
fade, when we do fade, as that maple 



31 



leaf. N Why look at that maple leaf — 
tkat thin& of scarlet and of flame; God 
throu&h all the months has piled tip 
this ima&nificenee of emerald, — ■ very- 
soon it will be a glorious pageant. Oh, 
I would love to he here in October, and 
I would love to see the &lory as it 
crumbles away! Well, does it crumble 
away? It is a religion that binds you to 
the past, this religion of the maple leaf. 
What is that leaf? Why that leaf is the 
result of a thousand sacrificial lives. A 
thousand did I say? A million ! Under 
that maple tree and under the ancestors 
of that maple tree there have fallen, 
year after year, in the pitiless Novem- 
ber storms, beautiful leaves like that. 
Leaves are the lun&s, the breathing 
organs of these trees. Well, fine men 
and noble women are the lun&s of 
human society. Government is like 
the stock of that beech; £reat and £rand 
men are like the lun&s, the breathing 
organs of that &reat strong beech. 
Human society does not exist because of 
the government but government exists 
because of human society. And the 



32 



maple leaf is the result o£ a&es and a^es 
of sacrificial maple leaves. 

You are wkat you are, young, man, 
because of the past of £reat men and 
£reat women — noble, unknown men 
and women — leaves that have faded — 
and the &lory of a life is the revealing 
of its richness. Why is that maple leaf 
so splendid in the autumn? Because it has 
been a £ood maple leaf in the spring: 
Way back there in the summer — it so 
related itself to the kingdom above, of 
sky and rain and sunlight, that this 
splendor which flashes out in the autumn 
is the unrolled £>lory laid up in the 
springtime. Why, that maple leaf is just 
like an old man who has put down 
cellar at the conclusion of the summer 
months some beautiful fruit; winter has 
come and he feoes down cellar and 
brinks up a basket of summer fruits. 
Well, it had to do with the months 
before. If you want a happy old a£e, 
£>ive to God a faithful youth and a faith- 
ful middle a£e. If you want to lie in 
the winter upon the cold snow like that 
red leaf, fluttering at last down from its 
place and proving that there is a fire that 

33 



never &oes out, you must be&in in the 
summer and way Lack in the spring- 
time; hut don't wait for the frost to 
make you heautiful, expect to he more 
beautiful in old a&e than you are in 
the spring. A religion that carries a man 
to old a&e, as it did Paul and as it did 
Abraham, and makes him heautiful, is a 
religion from above; it is a religion of 
the roots from which the crop has been 
taken, and out of the stubble there 
comes another harvest. It is the re- 
ligion of the maple leaf that is glorious 
in its beauty: It is a soft, sweet, tender 
religion, like rain coming down softly 
and tenderly. Let us look above and let 
us listen from above as softly and 
tenderly Jesus is calling, for this is the 
true religion of life. 

Hymn — 
"Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling" 



34 



SEP 6 1913 



I 



A Limited Edition, Privately 
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by W. H. M 



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